The incomplete ascent of Minnehaha Creek

 

Today I went on a bike ride, but this isn't the sort of post where I tell you all about it and show you a hundred pictures. 

I found myself heading upstream along Minnehaha Creek. I love this creek. It runs down through all of Southwest Saint Minneapolis. It goes over a famous falls shortly before coming to the Mississippi River. 

It's famous because a poet wrote:

"Hark!" she said; "I hear a rushing,

Hear a roaring and a rushing,

Hear the Falls of Minnehaha

Calling to me from a distance!"

And this poem (there's more than what I included) went super viral in 1885. 

People were into different stuff in the olden days is the only way I can explain it. Like, for instance, the favorite food back then was turtles! I never ate a turtle. And I hardly ever read long narrative poems either. I might like both, but when

What's that?

You only have a few minutes?

Sure. So I was biking up Minnehaha Creek, above the Falls. And I thought "This creek runs all the way up to Dan's house!"

Dan is a person I work with at the library, and sometimes I write about him here because he is on the super short list of co-workers I am allowed to discuss by name. Though I have known Dan for 15 or so years, finding him terribly annoying for the first five, and oddly endearing the last ten, I have never seen him outside of the library or off the library grounds. I thought "If I make it all the way up to his house I will call him on my phone and say 'I am outside'."

I don't know why. The idea just appealed to me. And for reasons related to bird identification I have Dan's number. Although I was only vaguely aware of where his house was.

So I kept biking up the creek towards Dan's house, which is pretty ritzy, but not really his, but that's a whole long story and I know you're in a hurry. His house is like practically next door though to Charles Schulz's old house, which is an anecdote I can't resist no matter how frantic everyone's life is around here, what with the stuff you have to get to and all that stuff with your big hurry which is fine and I totally understand. I get super busy too sometimes!

I came to a bridge. I got off my bike. Up the creek was a fabulous blue heron.

"Wow" I said.

I spent the next hour following it around and taking hundreds of pictures of it.

I'll show you just one of them, okay? At the end.

But it was a super nice time with that heron.

My Grandmother on my Father's side's maiden name was Heron. Though maybe it was spelled differently. 

Yes, this is another of those anecdotes I couldn't resist.

So anyway, hanging out with a heron is what I did instead of maybe, but probably not, surprising Dan.

Dan likes birds, so he'll appreciate it.

Biking redux

Yesterday, after biking to work on my slightly tank-like electric bicycle, I reflected negatively on the experience. I live in a world made for cars, full of giant streets, cartoonishly spread out points of interest, and miles of asphalt. And though I found bike lanes and straight paths to my destination, I felt a stranger in a strange land, a Lilliput among metal giants. Are there even people in all these four-wheeled metal giants, hurrying along, never stopping, always eating? 

Yeah, there are people in there. I've been one. But that's the only way I know!

But with my expectations lowered my ride home was better. Though the city has a long way to go, along one main street I found a fully dedicated off road bike path I hadn't even noticed on the way there because it was on the other side of the street. Also, I hit all the lights much better. Having to perch on a curb at the single ugliest feature of any bike ride, a major intersection, can turn the brightest optimist sour.

I'm not the brightest optimist. I'm like the third or fourth brightest optimist.

In addition to all of this, with my city not being Utrecht out of the way, I was able to suddenly appreciate that there actually were bike lanes for over 80 percent of my trip, and a few of them were even separated from the roadway (see paragraph one, it's super interesting!). Furthermore, I was on an electric bike. An electric bike is a lot of fun! I have had to try and explain what an electric bike is like many times now, but I'm never entirely satisfied. I think I might finally have it now:

An electric bike is like all the good parts of a regular bicycle: 

moving along under one's own power, 

without any of the bad parts of a regular bicycle: 

having to move along under one's own power.

But in the end the equation is a simpler one:

On the way to work I was on the way to work.

But coming home...

Well, I'll leave you with a song today:

Biking to work

 

Inspired by all the YouTube videos I watch about bicycling infrastructure, I was keen to ride my new bike to work. Today I finally managed it. Helmet on, some arugula and a book to return to the library in my wire bike basket, I headed out into a brilliant Spring day. 

I biked. 

I biked all the way to work. I'll be biking home later as well.

I think because all these YouTube videos I obsessively watched were mostly about biking in the Netherlands, my brain secretly expected me to be biking through the car limited streets of a quaint, old European town, and along picturesque canals full of ducks. Alas, such was not the case. I saw instead a lot of asphalt. The city was weirdly spread out to a person on a bike. There weren't many plants except maybe when I skirted Como Park, where they merely presented as a wall of greenery. I had to wait freakishly long times at a few massive intersections, and though it was a quiet day in the city, cars infested every inch of it.

I like a car too sometimes. They are convenient, but maybe convenient to a world made for their scale; one spread out, paved, spacious, and cartoony. One not made for close inspection.

It's easy to move through the city in a car usually, and I'm set up for it. I love easy. But when you're a cog in the machine you don't have to see the machine. I liked being on the bike. I liked the air and the exercise and the slight sense of virtue. But I was outside of the machine on my bike. I didn't think it would all be so ugly. And despite the small and welcome improvements in bike paths and bike lanes from the years past when I last biked these ways, I didn't expect to feel like: 

This, this is what my city looks like?

Last bike

With this mild December it may not be my last bike ride of the year, but I like to treat each one as if it is. So as I biked along today I wistfully murmured to myself "Lo, how long before I zip up this steep hill again while barely pedaling?"

Did I mention that it's an ebike?

Oh, good. I like to keep you informed.

On today's bike trip I didn't take any pictures though I had my camera. Getting off my bike, parking it, taking off my gloves, putting on my glasses, unwrapping my camera, taking the lens cap off, and aiming to shoot the beautiful, enormous woodpecker that just flew over my head and landed on the tree in front of me always seemed like a lot of trouble to go to, especially when there seemed to be a reasonable chance that the woodpecker would have died of old age by the time I was ready to photograph him. 

So I might have to come up with a more efficient biking and photography system.

Because it was a mild (for December) day, in the mid thirties, and a weekend, and almost entirely ice and snow free, the walking and biking paths were crowded. I got some good practice ringing my brass bell:

ping

ping ping.

Sometimes people would scurry alarmedly out of the way like I'd just yelled "DEATH ON WHEELS COMING THROUGH!" And sometimes people would pay no attention whatsoever. So the bell needs a lot of practice. Although it's possible no skill with bell ringing will ever solve the vagaries of human behavior.

Because of the crowded paths I learned one more really nice thing about the joys of my ebike. On a regular bike it could be frustrating and irritating to be blocked off by pedestrians or obstacles or dogs or traffic because it meant losing momentum that one had to fight ones way back to. But on an ebike, because that effort is always optional, and so the same as any other effort, I didn't mind. 

In short, my ebike has made me a calmer, more agreeable bike rider.

Pictures of my damn trip!

 

Oh, sorry.

I meant to say:

Pictures of my dam trip.

I went to a dam. I didn't mean to. I was on an outing on my electric bike, and I was thinking I'd go down to the wilder parts of the river and take pictures of exotic animals, like, I don't know, muskrats? 

It's not usually up to me what they are.

Actually, it's never up to me what they are.

So I went biking along the river, going farther than I really ever would because the bike is electric, and... helps. So in this manner I went down to the far away part of the river.

I have an exploratory nature when I hike around and explore and walk and bike. It has gotten me into a few scrapes along the years, but here I am. This time there was a path that wasn't where I was planning to go, but I thought "Well, where does this go?"

It went up the river for awhile and then it just... ended.

There was a fence.

But there was a hole in the fence. A big one.

Don't you think that meant they wanted me to go through the hole?

I did.

There was an old dirt road there that took me down below the Ford Dam, something I'd seen a billion times from above, but never from below.

So I got off my bike and took these pictures:

I usually take pictures of turkeys and flowers and bees, and they're always really pretty. I wasn't sure how I felt about these damn pictures. I mean, these dam pictures.

Then I went up a very steep, very rough dirt road. I think, done properly, my bike could have made it, but I didn't do it properly and so halfway up the hill I panicked a little and hopped off. I pushed my bike to the top and there was a huge, abandoned industrial building up there. It was full of broken windows and graffiti.

So I took some pictures.

I was pretty sure a few of them were kind of good. 

But I didn't know which ones.

So here they are:

Then I got on my bike and there was a road there. It climbed up to the River Path. Which made the whole thing a shortcut.

I like shortcuts.

And I was cold.

So I went home.

Ten surprising things about my electric bike

I got a new electric bike this week. I haven't had a bike in many years and have never had an electric one. Having poured over the available electric bike information for 30 years, I was somewhat prepared for the experience, but reality is always different. And on that note I thought I would share ten things about my new electric bike, many of which surprised me.

Yes, I realize that is more nuanced than my title (Ten surprising things about my electric bike), but if I explain everything in my title then there's nothing to write about here.

Although, fair point, if my title is insufficiently clear I have to waste valuable time explaining its nuances. This is what's happening now.

Good thing we have so much free time!

But before our list I will give a brief overview of the bike for the ebike neophytes among you.

Its brand name is Lectric XP. It cost $899 which puts it in the category of the cream of the bargain ebikes. It folds in half fairly easily, and also the handlebars fold down. It is heavy (62 lbs.) because ebikes have more stuff (motor, battery, etc.) and also have to be sturdier for the extra stresses of being more powerful. It has seven gears and can be ridden completely like a regular bike with no motor turned on or engaged or anything. It has a throttle you can twist and it powers the bike irrespective of pedaling. And then the main thing is that it has five different levels of pedal assist where, when it sees (feels? records?) your pedaling it provides a steady boost to your biking momentum.

Got it?

Now for the list:

Ten Surprising Things About My Electric Bike

(see above text for nuanced explanations of title)

1. Even though I know it's coming, it's always a tiny surprise whenever the bike's electric power kicks in. 

2. It's not amazingly fun. Maybe because it's Winter? But mostly it's just fun similar to riding any bike, with "riding the bike" simply being easier to do. So it's a little more fun than riding a regular bike.

3. It's exercise! There has been some good humored debate on this point in my house, and I wasn't really sure, but using the ebike normally, with a modest assist level, is an awful lot like biking on flat ground, only faster. Effortwise it's like going for a nice walk. Wait! I have the analogy: It's like being on a moving walkway at an airport. You can just stand there, get no exercise, and get to your terminal. But probably you'll walk while on it. It's exactly like regular walking, but you'll go faster than normal, or farther quicker.

4. It's not intense exercise though. The electric assist takes the edge off everything. Everything. On the flat I'm not normally going to ride a bike to where it's making me out of breath, but uphill I don't normally have that choice. On my ebike uphill is exactly like being on a flat with only the same leisurely effort required.

5. Uphill and downhill are reversed. In my lifetime of biking, going uphill has always been a bit of a dread, and going downhill has always been a relief and a joy. Now, after two rides, I find downhill is a bit of a drag because I have to slow down and manage the brakes, whereas uphill is exciting because it seems like magic.

6. It's all a little more complicated than I expected. Oh, anyone could learn to use this bike pretty quickly, but in regular biking one is simply managing the gears, but now I am also adjusting the power assist levels and even a throttle if I want, so getting everything at the level and speed I prefer, as conditions (traffic, hills, obstructions) change on the path, is almost endlessly fidgety. I do suppose my natural sense for what I want would simplify over time.

7. It's so normal! This is at once sad and delightful. Sad because there isn't like this constant "Oh my god I'm on a magical bicycle" feeling. And delightful because it's so much like biking, but faster, and easier. On the two lower assist levels it is possible to feel like I'm just biking at a reasonable pace and there is no assist at all, something easily disproved when one cuts out the assist, at which point one feels at first like one is pedaling through mud, in slow motion.

8. It attracts attention. I heard it did, but it's slightly more disconcerting than I anticipated. People smile at me. They turn their heads to look at me all the time. At first I'm like "What?" until I realize "Oh, the bike."

9. I use the throttle less than I imagined I would. I have three theories for this. One, it somehow feels like cheating and so it quickly gets to me. Two, my feet are just sitting there on the pedals with nothing to do so I might as well use them. Three, the throttle is only one speed (full) and so is kind of too fast for where I'm biking (mostly on combined paths with lower speed limits).

10. I like it. This maybe shouldn't seem surprising, but I guess I expected I would love it and it would be the most exciting amazing thing ever, or I would be disappointed and feel like it didn't work out or live up to my expectations. But the truth is, I simply like it. I think it's fun and possibly very useful, and I'm happy I bought it.

 

Electric bike

 

 

 

 

After 30 years of shopping for one I bought an electric bike.

That's a long time to shop. 

It built up a lot of feelings in me. 

Now I have the electric bike and I am a little overwhelmed. It's so big. 

Big in size, big in expectation, big in personality, big in personal mythology, big.

I have ridden it, but mostly so far I stare at it, warily, trying to work it out.

I haven't yet worked it out.

Thirty years ago they didn't really have electric bikes. That's when I started shopping.

 

It's pretty cold out and getting colder. When the snow comes again that should do it altogether and I'll put my bike in storage for four or five months having hardly used it. 

I would have loved having this bike best when I was 12, on the streets of the San Fernando Valley, where it was Summer most of the time and my neighborhood was 100 percent steep hills. My bike has a way of making hills like they're nothing. It's already my favorite thing about my bike.

I would also have loved having this bike when I was thirty, and my back didn't hurt most of the time, and I could bike through the Fairgrounds to my new job at the library.

I might also love having this bike next summer, when I can load my camera in the panniers and head to the wilder parks along the River that are too far to walk to and take pictures of bears and coyotes, bald eagles and raccoons, skunks and fossils and wildflowers and blue cheese caves.

I put a bell on my bike, an extra light, and a rear view mirror.

For some reason I wanted to say in here: "Everyone should have an electric bike."

But it turns out what I need to say is: "May you all get what you want in less than thirty years."

And:

"I think thirty years is better than never."

 

 

 

 

Home to the birds

The biking season should perhaps have officially ended last week. But I went out and biked to the University anyway. The wind cut through my wool mittens like a circular saw going through a piece of cheese.

"Hey," I said to the cold. "You do know that you don't need a circular saw to cut cheese, you can even just break off a piece of cheese?"

"Yes," Replied the cold "That's what we're planning on doing when your fingers sufficiently... stiffen."

So when it was 14 degrees out this morning I understood that I like my fingers. I'm using them right now to tell you all about how much I like them! I put away all biking things and prepared my feet for walking.

The down side of walking is it takes longer.

The upside of walking is it takes longer. 

While walking one sees everything. Cardinals, bald eagles, blue jays, geese, turkeys. Well, maybe one doesn't see everything, but one definitely sees birds. Riding a bike it is not very safe to be gazing over one's head, watching an eagle circle in the clear and bitter morning light. Walking it's almost safe to look all one might want. I mean, it's probably safe enough.

Furthermore, biking, this, that happened today, has never happened before:

Coming to the point where I leave the river and head into the University, I was writing my usual dark blog posts in my head. For no reason that I understand I looked up and saw three huge turkeys perched high in a tree. They were enormous, four foot tall, 50 pound turkeys. The biggest one was at the very top of the tree, like an absurd Christmas ornament.

Of course, I've never seen that not on a bike either.

Nice Ride and the electric bikes

Dear Nice Ride,



As the bicycle ride share platform for my beloved Twin Cities I have been occasionally in contact with you over the years and have had many emotional responses to your journey as a young twin cities institution.

When you first introduced docking bike stations where a tiny fob can unlock a bike for an hour, my wife and I quickly became subscribers. I had only good things to say about you, your vision, your clever relationship to the twin cities, your reasonable annual prices, your good faith commitment to spread across the twin cities, and your non profit status. When I saw you at a street fair I had only fawning enthusiasm to express to you, and a small request for more stations along the river...

to which you were strangely defensive.

But it was okay. Maybe just your marketing wing was a little weird.

I wrote it off as nothing. We continued to subscribe. My wife and I rode your bikes. Most of them worked. We were fans.

But then very few new stations came as we waited hopefully.

Then you changed your annual fee structure to your advantage, not mine.

Then you sold out to some large, private, national company in what was surely a high level graft situation profiting the mayor and the city council and most of all, the upper management of nice ride.

Then you started making lots of promises that looked fishy.

Then you brought in a bunch of pointless, irritating "dockless" bikes that required phone activation to use and were immune to our magnificent key fobs.

Then you completely moved out of the city of St. Paul, vastly reducing your range and somehow managing to cast both yourself and St. Paul, in a dark light.

Before our eyes you had rusted and congealed.

And I was horrified.

I cursed your name.

I sowed salt on the fields of my former praise. I despaired. I gave in to hopelessness.

Must capitalism ruin everything? Does everything once good always grow worse and worse and worse?

I was sad.

Oh, we still rode your bikes. I think they cost a bit more. And they could go fewer places. But I was a bit heartbroken.

Until one day an email came. A hopeful email came.

Electric bikes are coming.

ELECTRIC BIKES ARE COMING!!!!

I was so excited. I could hardly breathe I was so excited.  I forgot all my suspicions and sour feeling towards you. My disappointments fled like leaves from the autumn trees, raining to the ground to be crunched joyfully under my feet!

I was really looking forward to it. You were aces in my book!

Then the electric bikes were delayed.

Then the electric bikes were recalled.

And I waited.

And waited and waited and waited and waited.

And then one day, when I was almost despairing yet again, they came!

I was so happy.

I tracked them on the map you provide.

But these electric bikes never came near me. Until, finally, one day, at a station towards the end of my ride, I found one!

It was broken.

But then another day, at the end of my ride, I found one and it wasn't broken. I rode it for a minute. It was fun.

So I hung in there.

Then a little while later I found one at the start of my ride! It was so exciting! I ran to it.

It was broken.

Then much later I found one that wasn't broken. I had to sprint to it and fight off a vacationing couple for it, then explain why the one they had wasn't working. 

But mine was. So I rode it!

I was on an electric bike!

It is a terrible bike. It looked like it had been beaten with a sledge hammer. It surged violently. The electric power cut in and out with a jolt and fluctuated madly. The whole experience was jarring, rough, and rodeo-like, to say the least.

Yet still, I loved it. I had lots of fun. I was assisted! I was powered! I was faster than normal!

I have yet to find another electric bike of yours that is both available and that isn't broken, but don't think my heart doesn't race with anticipation every time I go to get a bike with my little magic fob.

So I'm just saying,


Keep up the good work,

Your customer,



Feldenstein Calypso